Comments on James Nicholson's articles RSS Syndication from SeekingAlpha.com http://seekingalpha.com/author/james-nicholson/articles http://seekingalpha.com/article/92809-valuation-metrics-of-large-vs-small-website-acquisitions?source=feed#comment-425031 425031 Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:44:33 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/73077-founder-s-co-op-between-vcs-and-angel-investors?source=feed#comment-398711 398711 Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:28:07 -0500 http://seekingalpha.com/article/21041-ten-worst-internet-acquisitions-ever?source=feed#comment-360027 360027 Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:25:21 -0500
Most of the acquisition teams I’ve interviewed have tons of experience making and closing deals. Each team member has skills in their own area of expertise.

Success requires a team with just the right talents for each step of the process. My experience has been that teams lack meaningful process and tools. Too often, methods are haphazard and results come from frustration and guesswork rather than measurement and planning.

No matter how bright the team is, the complexity of the process and the overwhelming amounts of information necessary to find and complete transactions with well chosen candidates simply keeps the failure rate high (about fifty percent of acquisitions destroy value).

Brokers and lead generating contacts provide brokered deals on a transaction based fee basis. It is not the ideal way to be introduced to candidates.

Here are a few steps to make your next acquisition add and not destroy value.

1) Build a measurable criteria exercise as a critical first step. Every company goes through it in some fashion. Few make it a measurable tool for evaluation. It is not that hard once the definitions are numerically rated to give a ranking score to candidates.

2) Learn how to bring candidates into the fold. Without the ability to contact the larger share of available well chosen candidates (database management and contact savvy), there is just too much left undone to be a representative sampling of the available market. How targets are contacted and what they are told has a great impact on the results you obtain (the quality and quantity of your candidate base).

3) Spreadsheet hell. There are many bad ways to manage the profiling and research results from ten or more candidates. Information needs to be updated regularly. This becomes a big problem if spreadsheets or paper are used. An web tools are worth the investment to have access to current information (it makes information useful).

Unmanageable information is useless. Decisions will be made without the most important information if systems are not in place to make it readily available.

4) Be well counseled for deal structure and finance. The markets at this time especially are hard to read. It is worth the investment to know what current market conditions (valuations/finance) are and not make decisions based on guesswork.

5) Plan for due diligence, integration, and its attendant problems. There are many good companies, software, and process people to help with due diligence and transition.

Attending to the non financial aspects of due diligence and integration pays big dividends.

Mike@packardacquisions...]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/71612-some-of-the-best-internet-acquisitions-in-2007?source=feed#comment-260437 260437 Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:11:49 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/21041-ten-worst-internet-acquisitions-ever?source=feed#comment-236055 236055 Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:00:02 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/73077-founder-s-co-op-between-vcs-and-angel-investors?source=feed#comment-176341 176341 Thu, 29 May 2008 18:46:32 -0400 founderscoop.com/news.php) to spread the good word. Cheers! Chris]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/71612-some-of-the-best-internet-acquisitions-in-2007?source=feed#comment-153123 153123 Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:26:02 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/71731-some-of-the-worst-internet-acquisitions-of-2007?source=feed#comment-149576 149576 Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:03:36 -0400 seeksomething.com]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/71995-google-and-amazon-vie-for-start-up-help-domination?source=feed#comment-149154 149154 Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:57:45 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/71731-some-of-the-worst-internet-acquisitions-of-2007?source=feed#comment-148778 148778 Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:59:20 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/71362-where-microsoft-and-yahoo-can-beat-google?source=feed#comment-147077 147077 Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:34:56 -0400
Microsoft with unprecedented resources and several tries just could not become a player in the Internet search - even YHOO, which started from nothing beat them badly.

Social networks and blog sites proved that they are like music CDs or movies, just because you throw at them lots of money, you can't necessarily buy success. MSFT is just as lost as the old, dying recording industry. They are showing remarkable similarities.

MSFT's biggest problem is that they just can't ensure in this new world that their money will buy them what they want or need.

In fact, this entire new world is built on infrastructure that MSFT claimed to be worthless (Open Source), it is built on a view about a shared world which is quite the opposite of the MSFT credo of monopoly and total control. MSFT just does not belong here and this is a club where you have to earn and can't buy membership.

The public image of MSFT is bad beyond repair for this age.
Not only because Windows users are just sick and tired of the endless problems of their Windows computers and with the Vista failure MSFT now seems to be incompetent even in their own home turf.

What's worse than this ever increasing feeling about the incompetence of MSFT is that they are not cool at all.

What drives the success of all the new Internet success stories - from Facebook to YouTube - is that they radiate coolness.

In this century MSFT and cool just does not fit in a same sentence. Or paragraph.
Just compare a Steve Jobs or a Ballmer keynote speech to get the picture. Have you seen Ballmer jumping around the stage like an... okay, let's not insult any species just because they are lower on the food chain. Ballmer was jumping like Ballmer - the way he is.
If it wasn't Ballmer, MSFT should have sued the guy for causing billion dollar damage to the MSFT brand. Maybe it's not too late, if MSFT shareholders wake up and demand the board to take action.

MSFT is loosing the game slowly but certainly because the company looks like Ballmer jumping on the stage, smells ancient, sounds arrogant like a 90-year old rich bastard with a 16 year-old beauty at the wedding night of an arranged marriage.

It's just not cool... and people have the choice to do cool things... ]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/71339-cnet-should-sell-news-com-to-dream-team-bloggers?source=feed#comment-147048 147048 Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:00:42 -0400
Generic sites are what I refer to as the "yellow pages" of the Internet -- and of course they are very valuable properties.

Also, several years ago people would often say "if you get a domain name, make sure it's dot com". People would nod and repeat that without thinking very much. If a network of news bloggers wanted to establish such a network, why wouldn't they do so at news.net or maybe even at news.org.in ?]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/71362-where-microsoft-and-yahoo-can-beat-google?source=feed#comment-146816 146816 Tue, 08 Apr 2008 04:45:04 -0400
I see MSFT attempts as tragic, and nothing good will come of it for anybody except Google.
]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/71334-why-you-ll-be-using-nbc-news-corp-s-hulu-long-after-youtube-fades?source=feed#comment-146687 146687 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:35:03 -0400
I don't think 'fresh and edited' go together. "Edited" content is no longer fresh. Now it's used.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/71334-why-you-ll-be-using-nbc-news-corp-s-hulu-long-after-youtube-fades?source=feed#comment-146458 146458 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:44:39 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/71334-why-you-ll-be-using-nbc-news-corp-s-hulu-long-after-youtube-fades?source=feed#comment-146364 146364 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:29:18 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/71362-where-microsoft-and-yahoo-can-beat-google?source=feed#comment-146339 146339 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:55:43 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/71362-where-microsoft-and-yahoo-can-beat-google?source=feed#comment-146285 146285 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:45:32 -0400 ]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/71362-where-microsoft-and-yahoo-can-beat-google?source=feed#comment-146284 146284 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:45:06 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/71334-why-you-ll-be-using-nbc-news-corp-s-hulu-long-after-youtube-fades?source=feed#comment-146263 146263 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 07:55:08 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/18490-loopnet-the-anti-zillow-has-a-compelling-model?source=feed#comment-94919 94919 Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:47:48 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/41026-iphone-report-the-great-and-not-so-great?source=feed#comment-91486 91486 Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:46:51 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/41026-iphone-report-the-great-and-not-so-great?source=feed#comment-91368 91368 Tue, 17 Jul 2007 10:46:36 -0400
Would anyone have wanted an iPhone if, like other cell phones: you would have to pay to get your photos out? (with the iPhone, you can sync them directly out into iPhoto, or email them for free); you would have to pay to organize and play music? (with the iPhone, it's just another sync from iTunes); etc.

Looking at other cell phones (cheap, inexpensive, but still the "latest" advanced versions from Samsung and Nokia, for instance) which have multimedia features: these things are ridiculous nickel-and-diming toll collectors with toy user interfaces. On something like a Samsung SYNC, the only way to get photos from the camera phone out is to pay. The multi-step process (ugly UI) that you have to go through to do this is awful. The UI on these things (from looking at the manual) is no better than what's on my 2 year old LG; ugly icons which make no sense, arbitrary menus to navigate which make no sense, tinny synthesized sounds. Totally non-intuitive and you can never remember how to do things.

These phones are free with 2 year activations, yes; because they're really not worth anything, other than giving you the ability to make calls.

The reason this becomes more apparent is that after switching over to an iPhone (which is wonderful), it becomes so much more obvious, like being poked in the eye with a sharp stick, how bad everything else is.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/41026-iphone-report-the-great-and-not-so-great?source=feed#comment-91285 91285 Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:59:35 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/41026-iphone-report-the-great-and-not-so-great?source=feed#comment-91251 91251 Mon, 16 Jul 2007 09:16:45 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/18490-loopnet-the-anti-zillow-has-a-compelling-model?source=feed#comment-89932 89932 Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:25:15 -0400 homevalence.com; still in alpha but pretty easy to track home appreciation. There is another service that it says is patent-pending (haven't seen yet) that looks like a different take.

Free with a neat map mashup of HPI data, Yahoo maps and Trulia.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/23275-feeling-good-netvibes?source=feed#comment-79500 79500 Sun, 31 Dec 2006 19:13:40 -0500 http://seekingalpha.com/article/19192-how-yahoo-can-beat-google-start-by-conceding-search?source=feed#comment-71947 71947 Wed, 25 Oct 2006 18:17:05 -0400
Yahoo could continue its work on search for social media and apply that to Flickr, del.ici.ous et al. It also could apply its own algorithms on top of the search tech it licensed from Google.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/19192-how-yahoo-can-beat-google-start-by-conceding-search?source=feed#comment-71919 71919 Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:34:02 -0400 sixkidsandafulltimejob.... Seeking Alpha did not pick up that post of mine. The big question on conceding search to Google is what does Yahoo do for short to mid-term revenues given that most of that still comes from search. I also think that Yahoo and its mass of users are still struggling to figure out blogs from numerous perspectives including reliability, timeliness and quality.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/18490-loopnet-the-anti-zillow-has-a-compelling-model?source=feed#comment-70356 70356 Mon, 16 Oct 2006 18:39:00 -0400 its a bit of a newcomer, but they have been growing. I mostly follow residential but thought I'd share my comments.

Also the article dosen't mention the Zillow API business model including Zestimates, Zindex info, charts, comparable sales (including sales date and price), beds/baths and other data.]]>